Saturday, January 20th. The Amex Stadium. Brighton.
I saw JJ in the corridor.
Not a planned encounter. Not a staged moment.
The away dressing room at the Amex is at the end of a corridor that shares a wall with the home team's medical room, and as I walked to the pitch inspection thirty minutes before kick-off, the door to the medical room was open, and JJ Johnson was standing inside, his Brighton tracksuit on, an ice pack strapped to his right knee, waiting for treatment on a minor knock he had picked up in training.
He saw me. I saw him. The corridor was empty except for a Brighton physio who was reading something on his phone and not paying attention.
"Gaffer."
"JJ."
A pause. Three seconds. The weight of a promise and a collapsed transfer and an eight-million-pound price tag hanging between us in a corridor that smelled of Deep Heat and linoleum.
